Larry Baza is the arts advocate we need in Sacramento

Larry Baza has a lifelong passion for the arts, as evidenced by his nearly four decades of experience as an arts administrator. The 71-year-old native has made a career of navigating the tricky, highly political and ever-changing landscape of arts funding and advocacy in our sprawling border city. While his roster of achievements are too long to list here, it includes steady leadership in the Chicano and LGBTQ communities, as well as most recently chairing of the city’s Commission for Arts & Culture. Two years ago, Baza was appointed to the California Arts Council [CAC], a state agency in Sacramento, and this week, he was named vice chair. I sat down with Baza to find out what his latest career move means for the local arts community.

Rachel Michelle Fernandes: What is exciting to you about your new position as vice chair of the California Arts Council? Do you think it’s going to bring some new energy and resources to San Diego?

Larry Baza: I’m really excited. Nasha, (Nashormeh Lindo, the new chair) and I have been talking like crazy. She’s an African-American woman and arts educator from the Bay Area. So she’s covering up there and I’m way at the bottom of the state. We want to line up our priorities to put them forward at the first California Arts Council meeting in April. I have some on my list and she has some on her list.

RMF: What’s on your list?

LB: Number one: the state/local partnership. The program funds a county agency in each and every county of the state and accounts for roughly 19 percent of the CAC budget. It’s a decent chunk of change. Because the County of San Diego doesn’t have an arts advisory council like it once did—I was one of its last directors—the city of San Diego serves in that role. They get a lot of money from us! Well, the city has chosen to use the money on some stuff that I’ve thought is not helping the whole arts community. I don’t want to cut back on money for the state and local partners, but I want them to be more accountable.

RMF: Why not try and bring back the Public Arts Advisory Council? There’s a lot going on all over San Diego, not just downtown.

LB: That’s the next step. But you have to remember this: the county has been dominated for more than 25 years by Republicans. Now they have term limits. We need two Democrats in there [the County Board of Supervisors] to get that council to come back. As long as those five seats are controlled by Republicans, it’s never going to work. When I was the director of the county arts council the reason that I left is because I couldn’t get them to do what I wanted them to do. I wanted them to do a grant program, and I wanted them funded. They put up no money.

RMF: It sounds like a multilevel approach. You start with trying to hold the city more accountable. What’s your vision for overseeing that accountability?

LB: I think that, for the state and local partners all around the state, I would like to see them more proactively do the work as the local arm of the CAC. That is why we are giving them funds. They should hold workshops for our grant programs. We can send staff down to San Diego. They hold the workshop and we can get all the application processes demystified with CAC staff there to provide the technical assistance.

RMF: So make it more accessible and not just have it be another chunk of change that the city does whatever they want with?

LB: Exactly. Help us to do the work that we’re mandated to do in serving all of California. Not just wealthy pockets and high profile organizations. Small rural counties could partner together and we could send staff there and cover the whole area letting them know what they can aspire to, especially if they’re thinking of creating a 501 (c) (3) or if their organization is getting new blood.

RMF: What’s your vision for the arts in San Diego?

LB: We need a new master plan. We need to get out there and hear what the communities have to say. A couple months back, we had a commission meeting in Skyline, a poor community, an underserved neighborhood. That community came out and I was so glad. There were working class white folks, working class Brown folks, working class Black folks, all there. And they were saying to us—we love to go to Balboa Park, but why can’t we have stuff right here?

RMF: What drives your passion for arts leadership?

LB: My background. I came from a very humble background. My parents didn’t have the benefit of a high school education. My dad was in the Navy, he came from the island of Guam. He met my mother (who was Mexican-American) in Downtown San Diego, and they were that first product, that first generation of Pacific Islanders from the Philippines or the Hawaiian Islands or Guam who were marrying Mexican-Americans… I think about every little kid from a poor family—never mind color or ethnicity—every poor kid that is like me deserves to be able to go to museums and to entertain the idea of having a career in the arts… You know art is for everyone. Accessibility has been kind of the watchword. My question has always been, “but what about these kids?” And how what are we doing to make it accessible for them? That’s been my whole trajectory, that’s been the whole reason. It’s been very rewarding.